Stout Recipe

So I am trying to recreate a beer I had last winter. I originally posted this in the extract forum but did not get a response for a recipe. Im planning on purchasing the supplies tomorrow. Here is a description from the brewery on the beer

Hippy Highway Oatmeal Stout - Our Oatmeal Stout is...well...black! It's chock full of six different imported English malts and 10% flaked oats that give it a thick, rich mouth feel. The Chinook and Northern Brewer hops definitely take second seat to the roasted and toasty malt profile. This is a stout lovers stout for stout lovers to love...PEACE!

This is going to be an extract brew so here is what I was thinking of ingredients, Some chinook and northern brewer hops, flaked oats, and english dark malt extract. I have been steeping grains prior to actually doing the boil so I am a little lost on what grains I should be using during the steeping process. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Oats don't have any diastatic power of their own, so they need to be mashed with a base malt to convert the starches. If you're trying to clone a brew, you're going to have to do better than "a little of this, a little of that." I don't mean to sound like an a-hole, but if you don't have a specific intent going in, you probably won't get the beer you're after. This is doubly true for a clone because 99.99999% of the time, the first shot doesn't come out like the beer you're trying to clone. You might try contacting the brewery. I've heard of people here on HBT having good luck with breweries helping them to clone their brew. Good luck with your brew. Cheers!

Maybe a partial mash may get you what you want, get a larger grain bag and a 3 gallon drink cooler. It worked for me for about a half dozen brews.

I'd look on one of the retailer websites for a base recipe. Northern Brewer has an PM oatmeal stout that might be a nice departure point (just click the "more information" link for the recipe - oh heck - here it is -
http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/PM-OatmealStout.pdf

If it were me, I'd take this recipe to my LHBS and chat with the folks down there about what I was going for. Fortunately, they know a lot more than I do and would probably send me out with a modified recipe that I could take a shot at.

I also like the suggestion about contacting the brewery. If you have the means, I'd go to the taproom and chat with the staff. You might get better results than an email.

Good luck.

As was pointed out above, you really aren't going to get what you want out of the oats in an extract/steeping grains process. You don't even need a cooler to do this, I've had good luck doing an BIAB partial mash just using my brew pot and a mesh bag. See the sticky for suggestions.

Also, almost all the advice I've seen says that you're best off avoiding dark malt extracts. You can get the color from the steeping (or partial mashing) and using plain light extract. This is said to be more repeatable, and gives you better control over what's in your beer, since the dark extracts are more of a mystery.

Finally, I echo the suggestion above to start with a kit or a tested recipe. If you don't do this, I'd get hold of a copy of Daniels' Designing Great Beers or similar and do some research on what grain combinations and ratios are going to get you what you want.

So what I ended up doing was just heading to the LHBS and asking the people working there. I wasnt ready to go partial or all grain due to the fact of an electric stove that is either ON or OFF and would take forever to heat up the required water for a partial mash brew so I went with extract. While I completely understand and respect your opinion on avoiding dark malt extracts Zeg that is what the local brew store suggested so I went with it. It might not be as repeatable but in the end it will be beer and should be drinkable. As for nukebrewer cant even say I really truly remember what the beer tasted like, I just know it was delicious. If Im a little off 1 i'm not going to notice and 2 if it gets the job done and is tasty I will be happy. And Billf2112 I think Im going to have to investigate how to do some partial brews. Extract brewing just isnt going to allow me to do what I want to do with this hobby I feel. It is a great starting point to get the basics down but I feel that I will quickly become more interested in tweaking recipes to be more what I want them to be and clearly partial or all grain is the way to go for that. Thanks for the help everyone, I will be sure to post how it turns out. When I checked earlier tonight I realized I should have invested in a blow off tube but it didnt make a huge mess so I cant complain to much